| | |
|
YuShiFirstPaper 4 - 08 Mar 2010 - Main.YuShi
|
| |
| META TOPICPARENT | name="FirstPaper" |
|---|
| |
>
> | (Revision 1 - Ready for Review) | | | Apathy, Vigilance, and an Amorphous Fear
-- By YuShi - 16 Nov 2009 | |
<
< | By now most people in my generation probably have some degree of awareness that they do not hide behind a veil of anonymity while online, nor are their activities forgotten once they go offline. After all, these days we are inundated not only with news articles that warn of privacy invasions, but also frequently hear of stories in which people land in embarrassing situations because of something that they placed or did on the web. While many of us are no longer oblivious to the idea of online privacy invasions, I find - at least among my peers - that many people’s responses to this threat tend to be either one of nonchalant apathy or extreme vigilance. In this paper, I first describe the two contrasting types of response and argue that neither is rational, and then I explore a possible explanation for why my peers are handling this issue in very different but nonetheless irrational manners. | >
> | By now most people in my generation probably have some degree of awareness that they do not hide behind a veil of anonymity while online, nor are their activities forgotten once they go offline. After all, these days we are inundated not only with news articles that warn of privacy invasions, but also frequently hear of stories in which people land in embarrassing situations because of something that they placed or did on the web. While many of us are no longer oblivious to the idea of online privacy invasions, I find - at least among my peers - that many people’s responses to this threat tend to be either one of nonchalant apathy or extreme vigilance. In this paper, I first describe the two contrasting types of response and argue that neither is rational; I then explore a possible explanation for why my peers are handling this issue in very different but nonetheless irrational manners. The essay concludes with my ideas for what we can do to avoid creating and perpetuating an amorphous fear. | | |
Group 1. Let’s Be Paranoid | | | While a sizeable portion of my peers do take a reasonable amount of precaution to secure their online information, the number of people who fall into the two groups described above is too significant to ignore. It is my contention that there is such an incoherence of response to online privacy concerns within a similarly-educated group because people do not truly have a precise understanding of what the threat is. The danger is not as tangible as that of writing one’s name and social security number on a sheet of paper and taping it to a lamp post, and it is certainly not as real as a thief breaking into one’s house and taking confidential files. Instead, for most of us we learn of online privacy dangers through warnings from the media and anecdotes from friends. This creates an almost mythical kind of fear, an amorphous fear that is always lurking, but one that can be dismissed as easily as it can be sensationalized. As a result, like the myriads of ways in which children react to ghost stories, people respond to the online privacy threat in ways that reflect their “gut feeling” rather than any reasoned process of thought. | |
>
> | What Can We Do?
I think the most effective way for one to curb this amorphous fear and deal with privacy concerns in as rational of a manner as possible is simply to become more informed. Media reports about online privacy vulnerabilities, especially those appearing in mainstream sources not specifically catering to a technical audience, are often sensationalized and not descriptive. Hence when one sees a headline saying that Facebook Applications pose a grave threat, one should attempt to learn why exactly it is a threat. How do these Applications get your information? Where do they get it from? By understanding the mechanisms through which a person’s information could be pilfered, one is better able to take reasonable precautions instead of resorting to extreme measures. Paranoid behavior comes from hearing sound bites such as “you leave a track of everything you do online” without attempting to understand the scope of such statements. In the Facebook/EIP example above, if those who deactivated their profiles took time to think through the absurdity of law firms using the students’ friends to spy on their profiles, then perhaps they would simply have “privatized” their profiles instead of temporarily deactivating their account. | | | I think this essay is peculiarly modest. You
don't have much trouble seeming right given the straw men against
which you contend. And the only insight you derive from the tour |
|
| Revision 4 | r4 - 08 Mar 2010 - 05:05:16 - YuShi |
| Revision 3 | r3 - 25 Jan 2010 - 02:11:06 - EbenMoglen |
|
|
|
This site is powered by the TWiki collaboration platform.
All material on this collaboration platform is the property of the contributing authors.
All material marked as authored by Eben Moglen is available under the license terms CC-BY-SA version 4.
|
|
| | |